ASIAN DIXIE
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About 20 years ago, this five-mile stretch of asphalt wound through a
thicket of light industrial complexes whose grey walls and chainlink fences
hid sleepy suburban neighborhoods housing plants workers. During the
mid-1970s, many of these plants became outdated and were closed, while
others relocated to smaller, more central locations. The workers followed the
jobs, and the Corridor fell to neglect. Fences rusted, paint peeled and dust
blew through broken factory windows. Property values dropped, taking with
them the Doraville and Chamblee tax bases.
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"People from Atlanta who want to do something different on
their days off come out here now."
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At about this time the first trickle of Asian immigrants were settling in
Dekalb county. The Corridor's low housing costs attracted them, and soon a
sizable community of Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese formed. They opened
grocery stores, bakeries, barber shops, cafes and restaurants. Then Asian
American doctors, pharmacists, lawyers and insurance brokers moved in.
Signs appeared in Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese.
The locals nicknamed the Corridor "Koreatown." People drove from
Atlanta to patronize the restaurants. Asians from the Atlanta area came to
buy traditional foods and socialize. "You would have it all there," says a
25-year-old Korean American woman who moved with her family to Atlanta
from Seoul in 1974. "There were large shopping areas that had everything
from hair dressers to restaurants to more hair dressers to bakeries to
wholesale stores."
By the late 1980s Asian investors from Hong Kong, Taipei and Seoul
began eying the Corridor, seeing profit potential in its development.
Chinatown Square, the first new shopping mall, opened in 1988. Soon
followed Korean and Vietnamese shopping developments. Asian Square, the
latest and largest mall, opened in 1993. Sprawling over seven acres, its 34
shops hawk Korean pop music, Chinese herbs, Thai iced-tea, Vietnamese
books and Honk Kong-style barbecued steak. Anchoring the mall is a branch
of the 99 Ranch Market, the nation's largest Asian grocery store. Its vast
stocks of Asian provisions draw shoppers from all over the region, with some
Asians driving from as far as Mississippi, according to James Lee, an
executive with Asian Square Partnership L.P.
"The Buford Highway is active now," says John J. Lee, president of the
Atlanta Korean Chamber of Commerce, whose office is next door to Asian
Square. "There's 50% more traffic now, and they're expanding the highway
from four lanes to six lanes. People from Atlanta who want to do something
different on their days off come out here now."
The Corridor's evolution pleased Atlanta and Dekalb county officials,
who encouraged further redevelopment. Then in 1992 Chan, restaurant
owner and jewelry manufacturer, proposed linking the Buford Corridor
shopping areas with a pedestrian promenade and naming it the International
Village.
"I was at the time on the board of the Dekalb Chamber of Commerce,
and I brought all the business people to have a meeting with the government
people, and they all the got the idea and liked it," Chan says. "That year I
raised a $5,000 fund for the International Village. We had a big fund raising
party at my restaurant."
Dekalb county embraced the idea and currently promotes it with glossy
media kits and investment proposals. "All these Asian communities are
within one mile of each other, so we're looking at pulling those together and
creating a pedestrian-friendly atmosphere with a theme development to tie
them together," says Ray Kemper, manager of International Development for
the Dekalb County Chamber of Commerce.
In the county's mission statement, Kemper describes his vision of daily
life in the International Village: "It's a typical day at the International
Village as shopkeepers unfurl their canopies, water their flowers and prepare
to open for business. The street is lined with flags from around the world,
and shoppers are able to choose restaurants, groceries, retail shops and
professional services from providers of a dozen nationalities, including
Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Latin American, Caribbean, African, Korean and
European. By noon the street is humming with commercecommerce
conducted in as many languages as there are cultures represented here."
Not bad for a once blighted little community only fit for poor refugees.
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